ARCADIA - Mayor Gary Kovacic and former Councilman John Wuo won two open City Council seats in Tuesday's election, according to unofficial results.

Another 699 ballots have signatures that still need to be verified before their votes are counted, said Chief Deputy City Clerk Lisa Mussenden.

The final tally will be announced by early next week.

Kovacic, an attorney completing his third term, was the top vote-getter with nearly 34 percent of the tallied votes. Wuo, a businessman, came in second with 24 percent, beating former school board member Mary Dougherty by 607 votes.

Although it's technically possible, Wuo said he considers it "very unlikely" the additional ballots will change anything since Dougherty would need to earn close to 90 percent of the uncounted ballots.

Ninety-nine ballots had to be invalidated this year because voters chose more than two candidates, Mussenden said.

Some of those invalidations were likely due to a ballot error in which the Chinese-language instructions directed voters to pick up to three instead of two candidates, she said. The city sent out correction notices to all voters asking those who had voted for more than two candidates to contact the city for a replacement ballot.

But some voters voted for four or five candidates as well, and there are always at least some "over-votes" in an election, Mussenden said.

Wuo said that while the error was unfortunate, it probably would not change the results.

"I think the voting spread between the second and third place, or even between Sho Tay and I was a big enough margin," he said, noting he and Tay were the only Chinese candidates and would be most affected by the error.

Tay, who came in fourth place, agreed. But he said he spoke to some Chinese residents who hadn't yet cast their votes days before the deadline since they thought they would receive another ballot, even if they hadn't contacted the city.

"The sad part is they (were) still waiting for the ballot," Tay said. "They didn't call the city until I called them ... It's confusing."